Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday that the electric carmarker will resume allowing bitcoin transactions when miners who verify transactions use more renewable energy.
“When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50 percent) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions,” he said in a tweet.
This is inaccurate. Tesla only sold ~10% of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market.
When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 13, 2021
Bitcoin rose 5.1 percent to $37,360.63 (roughly Rs. 27.3 lakhs) at 18:10 GMT (11:40pm IST) on Sunday, adding $1,817.87 (roughly Rs. 1.3 lakhs) to its previous close, after Musk’s tweet. Bitcoin price in India stood at 28.4 lakhs at 10am IST on June 14.
Musk also said that Tesla sold about 10 percent of holdings to confirm Bitcoin could be liquidated easily without moving market.
He announced in May that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin for car purchases, citing long-brewing environmental concerns for a swift reversal in the company’s position on the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin fell more than 10 percent after his tweet.
The billionaire said that he believed cryptocurrency has a promising future, but it cannot be at great cost to the environment.
In February, Tesla revealed it had bought $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 10,980 crores) of Bitcoin and would accept it as a form of payment for cars.
© Thomson Reuters 2021